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[Guide] Kog the Magic Voidling

Great guide, thank you, Eledhan. I am a fan of Kog, too. However, I like to play him as caster / ranged carry hybrid. That's why I would like to make a request.

Would it be possible to find out which of your suggested builds have bigger impact on Kog's "R" damage against various targets? I think this is where Sorc boots should really shine, but having exact numbers in % is so much better.

Thanks!

None of the items in my build enhance his R, other than the AD you get from MBR and Mallet. If you like to use his ult, then you should probably go with Sorc's boots and a Green Elixir...this will keep your AS up, and allow you to hit harder with your ult (and other abilities).

Have you ever thought about the Black Cleaver? Could it be useful for some team compositions?

1. -15 / -30 / -45 armour debuff applicable from afar could work in teamfights, if your team is doing mostly physical damage. Not so usefull for you, unfortunately.
2. 30% AS is not so bad (about 2x less effective than Wit's End and 3x less than SotD in terms of AS/gold).
3. 55 AD is... 55 AD. Just some damage against all targets, including towers. And 27,5 more damage on your "R" as well.

Have you ever thought about the Black Cleaver? Could it be useful for some team compositions?

1. -15 / -30 / -45 armour debuff applicable from afar could work in teamfights, if your team is doing mostly physical damage. Not so usefull for you, unfortunately.
2. 30% AS is not so bad (about 2x less effective than Wit's End and 3x less than SotD in terms of AS/gold).
3. 55 AD is... 55 AD. Just some damage against all targets, including towers. And 27,5 more damage on your "R" as well.

Only way I would EVER use BC is if I'm going AD Kog, which I don't really like because the AD items are so darn expensive!

The biggest benefit for my build is it's cost-effectiveness in terms of DPS/gold. It's just so freakin cheap compared to every other build out there, and it massively scales up your W since you gain so much AS.

If you want AS In an AD build, you have to build BC and PD. Let's compare those two "core" items to the first two items I get in my build, without considering the gold...

If you compare the AS and Damage to a champion, my build wins
In terms of Armor Penetration, it's really a tie, since both are somewhat conditional

In terms of additional benefits...I think I'd rather have the defensive stats from MR instead of the crit chance and move speed. Either way, though, you can't beat that anti-dodge active, since the best way to mitigate Kog's damage is to get dodge.

Now...if we factor in the cost of the two builds, my build really starts to pull away from BC & PD since it costs about 2,000 less. I could add in another Recurve and Pickaxe for MBR and still be almost exactly even with BC & PD in terms of cost...

Which means that if I do a cost-effectiveness comparison, I would have to do the following...

Note that there really is no way to improve his Ult very much. It deals 400 champ damage at 16, and has a lousy 0.3 AP ratio and 0.5 AD ratio.

AD is already a loser as discussed, and AP is not very good either. Therefore the best way to boost the ult is through Magic Penetration and ensuring you have enough mana to make good use of it.

I personally use a Chalice so I can use my ult quite a bit. It is cheap and the MR is helpful too. However this delays your autoattack progression. I use mpen runes and with sorc shoes this greatly increases my poke damage with the ult, and even the puke carpet. Once again, at the expense of maxing my autoattack...though it is still quite powerful.

Heya Eledhan, any way you could do some damage calculations of this build, compared to "AD Kog". For example see this thread: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1434420

They postulate that Kog deals lots more damage with a bloodrazor, Inf Edge, and Zeal vs Bloodrazor, Malady, Wits End (or whatever onhit config you wish to compare). First thought is...uh yeah since #1 is so expensive.

But since you already have the spreadsheet set up, this might give quantative answers to these questions.
I'd recommend using similar price points with a few different builds. The normal build, the bizarre bloodrazor/IE/zeal build, and a pure AD/crit/AS build, to see how they compare.

My one question is the argument for SotD over Malady. The numbers don't lie, though it's largely in a vacuum. The one thing that Malady offers over SotD is team utility. If you have anyone on your team that does persistent magic damage, Malady helps both you and them take down a target, whereas SotD is purely a selfish item (unless Jax is on the enemy team). The numbers between the two are close enough where teamfight DPS would likely wind up higher with Malady.

(I often refer back to a scenario where an enemy Cho'Gath was largely unkillable for his large amount of MR. Except the times where I was able to Q, W, E, and auto-attack, shred his MR. I'd watch his health melt as the red bars of damage from myself and my team grew larger and larger with each addition of the MR shred debuff.)

There's also the consideration of consistency. You mentioned with SotD, your poke harass could be stronger if you time your shots correctly, which is true. What I'm most concerned about is the other side of the coin, where a particular skirmish could net 0 bonus damage from SotD, when in that same skirmish, Malady would have given 60 bonus damage + MR shred.

Moreover, when hitting a fleeing opponent, Malady will shred MR off of the target allowing your ultimate to hit harder until the debuff wears off.

I suppose my point is that on paper, and in the math concerning auto-attack DPS, SotD is the best choice, but in practice and actual scenarios, I prefer Malady.

My one question is the argument for SotD over Malady. The numbers don't lie, though it's largely in a vacuum. The one thing that Malady offers over SotD is team utility. If you have anyone on your team that does persistent magic damage, Malady helps both you and them take down a target, whereas SotD is purely a selfish item (unless Jax is on the enemy team). The numbers between the two are close enough where teamfight DPS would likely wind up higher with Malady.

(I often refer back to a scenario where an enemy Cho'Gath was largely unkillable for his large amount of MR. Except the times where I was able to Q, W, E, and auto-attack, shred his MR. I'd watch his health melt as the red bars of damage from myself and my team grew larger and larger with each addition of the MR shred debuff.)

There's also the consideration of consistency. You mentioned with SotD, your poke harass could be stronger if you time your shots correctly, which is true. What I'm most concerned about is the other side of the coin, where a particular skirmish could net 0 bonus damage from SotD, when in that same skirmish, Malady would have given 60 bonus damage + MR shred.

Prior to team fights, SotD blows Malady out of the water. The fact that some of the time you are harassing your lane opponent you can land 2 procs in 5 shots and some of the time you can only land one, and other times you won't land any...well, that's why I used 25 as the average damage for the proc. Sometimes it will be 40 (200 / 5) and other times it might be 0.

I love Malady late game for this exact reason. I originally posted that you should swap out SotD for Malady if you get to 6 items in a game. But...I changed that to be Void Staff. The fact of the matter is, if you are blasting away with Void Staff, you won't even NEED your teammates to deal extra damage to your target because they will be losing roughly 25% or maybe even more of their HP per second...

Quote:

Moreover, when hitting a fleeing opponent, Malady will shred MR off of the target allowing your ultimate to hit harder until the debuff wears off.

I suppose my point is that on paper, and in the math concerning auto-attack DPS, SotD is the best choice, but in practice and actual scenarios, I prefer Malady.

Again, I originally posted that Malady was a great swap for SotD since it deals more DPS late game and helps with your other abilities, etc. However, now that I have thought about it more, if you are going for more DPS at that point in the game, Void Staff is the way to go...the DPS increase is simply absurd...

[EDIT]

As an added thought...

SotD procs on towers, granting you the equivalent of a Pickaxe when pushing towers. That alone would make my mind up about the choice between SotD and Malady without even considering Void Staff late game.

Heya Eledhan, any way you could do some damage calculations of this build, compared to "AD Kog". For example see this thread: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1434420

They postulate that Kog deals lots more damage with a bloodrazor, Inf Edge, and Zeal vs Bloodrazor, Malady, Wits End (or whatever onhit config you wish to compare). First thought is...uh yeah since #1 is so expensive.

But since you already have the spreadsheet set up, this might give quantative answers to these questions.
I'd recommend using similar price points with a few different builds. The normal build, the bizarre bloodrazor/IE/zeal build, and a pure AD/crit/AS build, to see how they compare.

They just don't compare...

Check out the link again...I added a new sheet comparing AS On-hit to AD Crit

AS On-hit outperforms AD Crit by HUGE margins at all stages of the game except extreme late game. But even then, AS On-hit out-performs AD Crit by 4% with Void Staff...which will also boost his abilities even further than the AD Crit build ever could.

It was a fun exercise, and I'm glad I did it, because it's just so clear what the best way to build Kog is in terms of an auto-attacking Koggy.

SotD procs on towers, granting you the equivalent of a Pickaxe when pushing towers. That alone would make my mind up about the choice between SotD and Malady without even considering Void Staff late game.

This I did not know... that changes my opinion of SotD substantially...

Alright, so you have an entire page of AS. Your boots, recommended, are AS. If someone were to follow your typical core build, they wouldn't have anything but the measly 15% MPen from the offense mastery tree. At what point do you typically feel MR is becoming a hindrance to your damage output? Is it really not until late game when you potentially grab Void?